


bright as the sun and bold as the moon

by valkyrierising



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/M, Post-Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-09
Updated: 2015-05-09
Packaged: 2018-03-29 17:27:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3904723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/valkyrierising/pseuds/valkyrierising
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She wonders if Vision can see the haunted girl in her eyes when she stops crying and thinks about the times when Pietro and her narrowly avoided trouble. She knows that she sees wonder in his eyes when he looks at the other Avengers. She’s not exactly sure what he sees when he looks at her, but it’s enough to know that he orbits very closely to her. She doesn’t mind. In fact, there’s a part in her that finds spending time with Vision the enjoyable part of her time here.</p>
            </blockquote>





	bright as the sun and bold as the moon

**Author's Note:**

  * For [plinys](https://archiveofourown.org/users/plinys/gifts).



> For the fic swap with Jess with the prompt: aftermath. Sorry you're stuck in this trashcan with me boo xoxo

There are times when she feels that her world is about to crumble all around her.  Ever since her power was unleashed in Sokovia, she’s felt like she’s been standing on a livewire. There is so much more to her power than she ever knew and it frightens her, what she can do to others.

She’s seen the Avengers, her _teammates_ but she can’t bring herself to call them that. How do you call someone a teammate when you’ve revealed the darkest part of their thoughts to them while working for a robot hell-bent on the destruction of the world? As well, when she went into their minds, a part of her became rooted within them. It was not a comfortable experience that she wanted to go through.

She finds it best if she keeps her distance away from them, the gaping wound her brother left in her unable to be filled. She’s afraid of what she can’t do; her power seemed endless in the brief glimpse she had of the universe after unleashing her power.

She’s seen the future, the one where the galaxies collided and there is nothing but blackness. She wishes she could unsee that vision and simply be the girl with magic on Rogers’s team but she cannot and for that, she cannot allow herself to get too close.

Slowly, of course, she disentangles herself from the group activities because Captain Rogers emphasized the bonding aspect. She didn’t think she was ready or that she would ever be.  She wore solitude better than she thought ever since he died. It was lonely though, not having someone with whom she could share a glance with and have them know immediately what she was thinking. He would know how to help manage her power, the glimpse of the destruction of the cosmos and find a way to ground her. But, he’s not here and she’s alone with just her mind and powers that Strucker unleashed.

Her mind scares her sometimes. Hers is a power that cannot be contained.

She later learns that this is chaos magic and a part of her sinks knowing that there really is no limit to her power. Destruction lay in her palms and a spark was all that was needed to set it off.

The shopkeepers at home would laugh when she ran with Pietro down the street, before Stark’s bombs came to take away everything. They would say that she had to hold onto Pietro or he’d get away from everyone. But what they wouldn’t realize is that Pietro held onto her too and they were all they had after their parents were killed. She feels like a balloon that’s drifting through the air, no place to call her own, no one that could begin to imagine what she felt in this moment.

What was wonderful about Pietro and she even when they endured the procedures was that they were _otherworldly_ together. There was nothing that they couldn’t face together.

It pains her to wake up in the morning to find out that she doesn’t have a brother anymore. She didn’t have Pietro who would make the stupidest faces at her to get her to break concentration, or speed a mini twister around her to bother her. She was well and truly alone.  

*******

The red spirit in her hands twists as she attempts to master it some more. She could only throw a bit from what the assistant Strucker had gotten to teach her and then there was the burst of energy she had after his death to tear apart Ultron’s minions. She thinks of what Pietro would tell her to do.  

A blur passes by the corner of her eyes and she halts her motions, stilling as her eyes follow the silent intruder. Vision.

He was the strangest Avenger beside her, an android-man. He was a strange one, keeping away from the Avengers like she did. It was natural undoubtedly; he was a robot and like her, an outsider compared to the tight knight group that were Rogers, Romanoff, Wilson and Rhodes.    

She felt his presence beside her, his body whirring softly as he took a place beside her.

“I hope I’m not intruding Ms. Maximoff,” he said as she stiffened slightly at his proximity within the large training room. However, she says nothing and begins her first position.

She nods at him as she continues her movements. They stay in that silence for a few minutes, his presence putting her more at ease than anything as the energy in her hands shifts. After she’s done, she simply looks at him and he does too before they both walk off. Uncertainty clouds her thoughts and she’s unsure of what to say.

There’s something comforting about him where he doesn’t press her for any answers. She can feel it in the loaded stares of her teammates, the unspoken things they think when they look at her. That she’s mad, she’s only a second away from snapping. She wants to scream, unable to bear the stares of them all. Lost and with an ache in her chest that cannot be repaired, she still lives. She pushes through and bears it because she needs to know that she can do this, learn to figure out life without a twin. She needs to prove to herself that she is capable of continuing when half of her soul has been ripped out.

They continue like this for days, neither one of them saying anything besides the feeling of each other’s presence. Vision’s thoughts are quite peaceful and normally, she doesn’t make a habit of going into other people’s minds but he’s channeling calming thoughts to her when she feels as if she’s at the breaking point of her power.

“Ms. Maximoff?” Vision’s voice cuts through her intense stare at the energy in her palm.

“Yes Vision?” She sighs as a burst of energy dissipates as soon as she tries to create a shield.

“Might I suggest that instead of holding back, you release the energy even more?”

“What do you mean?”  She turns to him, folding her arms. Surely he had to be joking. She didn’t know how to hold back when she didn’t know the limit of her power.

“I think it would be best if you just let go and see where your powers end,” he said as she turned to give him a quizzical look.

“I’m dangerous,” she shakes her head as she refolds her arms, as if putting them underneath each other would get rid of their power.

“Try.”

The next time the energy forms in her hand, she lets more of it fester and grow until a miniature storm rages in between the palms of her hands and then she lets go. It expands as it races towards the walls of the room and then a boom resounds. Within seconds, Vision shields them from whatever else came from her magic.

“Wow,” she says, slipping into her native tongue and looks in awe at Vision. “I did it!” He looks at her with something like warmth in his eyes and her breath catches slightly. “Thank you.” They leave it at that before leaving the room. She’s uncertain of what to make of their encounters. She feels something inside of her riveted by something inside of him that just makes everything go out of focus for just a few moments. She’s certain that she’s probably making things up and makes her way to the mess hall, thinking that her self-imposed exile should begin to lessen as she made progress with Vision.

After teaching her how to expand safely, he broadcasts serene thoughts to her own and pushes her to improve. It felt nice, having someone to hold her back as she feared the worst of her magic. The energy in her hands begins to grow larger and larger after their first meeting; the storm becomes bigger until she’s harnessed enough chaos magic to level a small country. She knows because he tells her this seconds before the magic reverberates around the room and he catches her before her own energy knocks her down; arms wrapped around each other like they were when he rescued her in the floating city. He sets her down and she feels the heartbeat in her chest thunder longer after he’s put a little bit of distance from her.

Before, she knew how to control and bring back an arc of energy with a snap of her wrists and now, she can do more.

It’s the first time in a while that she feels that she can breathe easy again. It’s also another time where she feels like she’s betraying Pietro’s memory at going on beyond him. It’s stupid and it shouldn’t make her upset but she simply sits down on the ground as tears prick at the back of her eyes. It’s only when she rubs the back of her hand on her cheek that she realizes she’s actually crying and it’s a trigger for the dam she built inside to release the tears she hadn’t a few weeks ago.

Vision says nothing as he joins her in the ground as she weeps in memory of her brother.

“Thank you,” she tells him as he helps her stand up and walks away. She wonders if Vision can see the haunted girl in her eyes when she stops crying and thinks about the times when Pietro and her narrowly avoided trouble. She knows that she sees wonder in his eyes when he looks at the other Avengers. She’s not exactly sure what he sees when he looks at her, but it’s enough to know that he orbits very closely to her. She doesn’t mind. In fact, there’s a part in her that finds spending time with Vision the enjoyable part of her time here.

*******

“Escaping from the rest of them?” She asks one day as she finds him in the backyard of Avengers Tower and sees him levitating in meditation. Vision is barely fazed when she moves to stand herself in front of him.

“Ms. Maximoff,” he opens his eyes and nods to her.

“Wanda. You can call me Wanda,” she tells him. She feels dangerously close to a little school girl right in that moment, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear as his gaze never wavers from hers. “Can I join?”

“Yes. However, I was wondering if I could see you try something. Have you tried using your magic to fly?

“Fly?” She wraps the red jacket tighter as she looks at him, cocking her head to the side.

“Use your magic to ground yourself to the universe and fly.” She raises an eyebrow and says nothing as she closes her eyes and tries to ground the magic, whatever he meant. She opens an eye, frustrated. “I can’t do it.”

“Ms. Maximoff,” Vision starts.

“I don’t know how! It’s just ground the magic? How on earth do I know how to _do_ that?”

“Ms. Maximoff, look,” Vision cut in as she huffed a breath out. She was floating above the ground and then she cuts back to his face, grinning. “This is _amazing_.” She moved, the skirt of her dress floating gently around her as she soared across the sky. And then came the part where she realized she didn’t know how to get down.

“Uh, Vision… some help?” She looks down to see him. A smile was on Vision’s face as he went upwards to meet her. Grasping her hand in his, he gently tugged her down. They landed; hands still held in each other’s as she beamed at him while he smiled. She thought it was the brightest she’d seen him and a blush stole upon her cheeks as she looked away. It was the freest she had felt and this time, there was no sinking feeling weighing upon her heart.

A meowing of an animal nearby cuts through their moment and she walks towards it. A kitten, no older than a few months, that was meowing.

“This is a… cat?” Vision says as he goes to where Wanda is bending over to pet it. It turns out the kitten is a she and becomes fascinated when Wanda began to use her magic to play with it. As soon as Vision comes forward with a hand outstretched, the cat jumps and bites at the finger before scampering off. A trickle of laughter escapes Wanda as a look of confusion passed through her face and then she’s giggling like a mad-woman.

“I guess she doesn’t like you as much,” she said when she wipes away a few tears from her eyes. She looks into his eyes and smiles softly before walking away.

*******

They became attuned to one another and like clockwork, find ways to work in sync with each other. They became, to put in the words of Sam Wilson, “a rock star duo.” Something that the people would always get wrong with her and Pietro is that she too was fast. Not in speed, but in thought. Where he would be the legs, her mind would be running through different scenarios and plans to get out of any situation. They were unstoppable. With Vision, she runs something similar to that but as he’s got even faster capacity for assessing any situation, she goes through plans for battle and how to get in and out of any situations as quickly as possible without causing the most amount of damage.

“Hold up, she can fly?” Rhodey says one day in a practice scenario as Sam whoops in delight. She ducks her head bashfully, making brief eye contact with Vision. Natasha simply nods. It doesn’t take long for the rest of the Avengers to pay more attention to them after that is put out there and begin to assess them critically and separately.

 Natasha takes her out for sparring multiple times a week, the time where she and Vision would normally go outside to meditate, to assess her skills beyond magic. Rhodey, Captain Rogers and Sam try to figure out how to best assess Vision before settling on having Rhodey suit up for their sessions. She doesn’t minding working with them now; she’s got a handle on her powers that she knows the limit to what she can throw at them.

She found herself missing the time when it was just her and Vision as unit of their own. She finds herself giving him a broader smile than she’d done in the company of her teammates before she flies up with Wilson and Rhodes.

*******

They sat in silence on the days after they sparred heavily. Tonight, they had gone out past nightfall, the crisp summer evening of earlier indicating that they were nearing cooler months. The stars shined surprisingly bright and she leaned back on the grass while Vision took his place beside her to meditate. Lots of thoughts plagued her in the moment but amongst them, she found that Vision took a lot of them. He fascinated and intrigued her. He wasn’t a man but he wasn’t a robot, not as unfeeling and nefarious as Ultron was. He was genuinely curious about the world that he inhabited. She would’ve thought that he would’ve been even more self-absorbed than Ultron was for being sentient but that wasn’t the case. He seemed almost fascinated by the process of being human.

“Vision?” She asks as she absentmindedly twists a ball of energy in between her palms and sends it into the sky, a cloud of red electricity scattering throughout the night sky and making the stars even brighter.

“Wanda,” he responds as he turns to look at her from his meditative pose.

“I’ve been meaning to ask, do you … feel things? Emotions?”

“I am learning from Mr. Rhodes, Mr. Wilson, Mr. Rogers and Ms. Romanoff. I especially learn from you Ms. Maximoff.” She sucked in a breath, daring a glance at him.

 He looks at her and it pierces into her soul. It anchored her to their moment and she got up, curious as to what he could possible mean.

“What do you learn from me?” She asks as she fidgets with her arm cuffs. He lays a hand on one of them, staring at her as he begins to talk.

“I learn the variety of the emotional spectrum. Of grief and heartache, of joy and wonder, and of the blinding anger that sometimes consumes you when you practice by your lonesome at night. I learn of love and the different types of it exhibited within our teammates.” She nods in response, flicking the ball of energy away and leans forward to hear him continue. His voice is soft, but calming and she is grateful that he sought her out first. “From you, I learn that joy is better when one can witness bringing it to someone else. There is so much more to learn but I learn every day from you and them about human emotion.”

“Vision?”

“Yes?”

“Do you think you feel love?”

“I believe I do Ms. Maximoff,” he said as they held each other’s gazes. She nods, and for a moment, it feels as if everything is truly where it belongs. She leans forward to press a kiss on his cheek that lingers for a second too long before turning her gaze up to the stars.

“Do you know about the stars?”

“I do. Mr. Stark programmed me to have infinite knowledge.”

“Humor a witch then,” she smiles as grounds him beside her.

“For you? Of course.” As she moves to get him settled beside her, her shoulder bumps into his and he wraps his hand around hers. She looks up to him while he’s already begun to look into the sky while she smiles at him. She begins to point out a few of the constellations her mother told her before their deaths and Vision’s hand feels right within hers as she points it above them.


End file.
